Lawmakers in California are seeking legislation that requires government healthcare agencies to provide multilingual medical services to all people with low English proficiency (LEP). With linguistically diverse states countries becoming ever more common, the current medical systems shines light to the growing problem of the lack of solutions available for facilities to provide quality medical care for patients who cannot effectively communicate with their doctors. Fortunately, TermWiki Pro has the solution! Alleviating the possibility of mistranslation and instead ensuring effective localization of medical facilities.
The Problem:
Within the ever growing multicultural societies in which we live, the need for ad hoc medical translators is high but the number of professional translators available is not sufficient to meet this demand. There are several cases where, more often than not, volunteer translators or even family and friends of the patient are the only means of communication. Even though these people may be fluent in both languages, they are not specifically trained to translate medical terms and this in turn leads to mistranslation which puts the patient in danger of being treated for the wrong ailment. A well-known case is that is Willie Ramirez when in 1980 the mistranslation of the Spanish term ‘intoxicado’ had severe consequences for the Cuban teenager, leading Willie to be wrongly treated for a drug over dose when in fact he was suffering from a brain hemorrhage. With the confusion taking 36 hours to be realized, what resulted was Willie was unfortunately left quadriplegic and would never be able to walk again and a $71m settlement.
TermWiki Pro would have been able to eliminate this problem as it is able to translate Spanish to English, along with various other languages. TermWiki Pro would have allowed the doctor to understand the Spanish medical term of ‘intoxicado’ and Willie would have been able to be treated as soon as he was admitted to the hospital.
The shocking discovery is that Willie’s case is not unusual, the US census bureau have found that 21% of people residing in the US over the age of 5 speak a language other than English at home. Out of this 21%, 31.6 million speak none to very little English and when they need medical care, they have to rely on friends and family to translate.
Consequently, doctors have become hesitant to treat patients with LEP. As a defense, they take extra measures to diagnose patients by running more tests than necessary, relying on medical records and patient consent forms, or refusing to treat the patient altogether. LEP patients are also less likely to make doctor visits or use preventative tests for illness. Patients may also have difficulty understanding a diagnosis, medication instructions, and how to follow up with treatment.
The Need:
What multi-lingual medical care needs is consistency across all medical terminology in all languages. If hospitals do not have the option of using ad hoc translators, they need a way to make specialized medical terminology available for their staff to refer to. A centralized, efficient and accessible database of multi-lingual medical terminology is the ideal solution to alleviate the pressure for accuracy among hospital translators.
The Solution:
TermWiki Pro provides a way for accurate medical translation and advanced medical knowledge network.
TermWiki Pro is a terminology management tool that can be made accessible to all staff members, in all locations. TermWiki Pro allows specialist terms in multiple languages to be quickly and efficiently collected, translated and professionally approved; alleviating the possibility of medical terms being mistranslated. It allows for the elimination of uncertainty of the translation of medical terms once and for all, once a translation is entered for a term it will be available to your whole staff. Terms are searchable through TermWiki Pro’s strong search engine.
TermWiki Pro is a new dynamic means of open source translation, all terms are in one place and accessible anywhere. As it uses the cloud, there is no need to download software and is accessible via the internet. You can also collect terms together and create Blosssaries in order to organize specialized terms into categories.
TermWiki Pro is easy to Use and is accessible via phone, tablet and computer. It requires little training and accommodates for people who do not have a technical background.
With TermWiki Pro, patients are able to receive better care and feel comfortable in seeking medical care which in turn leads to more frequent visits. It also speeds up the whole process for patients with the elimination of potential risk of making mistakes for medical professionals which, as in the case of Willie Raimirez, can lead to huge payouts.
TermWiki Pro allows hospitals that can’t find or afford to have a lot of professional ad hoc translators to have access a database of multilingual terms that they can refer to if they are unsure of a the translation of a term or word.
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